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Lactose Intolerants Beware! The Zooarchaeology of Dairy - Ep 61
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In this episode we discuss all things dairy. Tune in to learn more about how several archaeology sub-disciplines come together to provide evidence for dairy production and consumption in the past. Also some interesting bog butter theories.
Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/61
Links and Sources
- Albarella, U. (1997). Size, power, wool and veal: zooarchaeological evidence for late medieval innovations. Environment and subsistence in medieval Europe, 9, 19-31.
- Bieleman, J. (2005). Technological innovation in Dutch cattle breeding and dairy farming, 1850–2000. The Agricultural History Review, 229-250.
- Bleasdale, M. et al. (2021). Ancient proteins provide evidence of dairy consumption in eastern Africa. Nature communications, 12(1), 632.
More sources at https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/61
Contact
- Alex FitzpatrickTwitter: @archaeologyfitz
- Simona FalangaTwitter: @CrazyBoneLady
- Alex’s Blog: Animal Archaeology
- Music "Coconut - (dyalla remix)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UiKoouqaY
Affiliates
- Motion
- Motley Fool
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeo Animals Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Archaeo Animals, the show all about zoo archaeology. This is episode 61, lactogen tolerance beware, the zoo archaeology of dairy.
Theme: Zooarchaeology of Dairy
00:00:32
Speaker
And with you, it's me, Simona Falanga, and... Me, Alex Fitzpatrick. Oh, so, bit of a different one this time, because of course, I mean, it is still related to animal exploitation, but not as much in... of a bony subject. Not really. I mean, we will talk about bones, because, obviously, but it's a bit more of like... I mean, it's from animals, so you wouldn't say it's animal adjacent, but I guess it's like...
00:00:58
Speaker
don't know. I don't know how to describe this one. First it still like ties in with your archaeology because it does pertain sort of animal exploitation and is something that as you'll find out, we can learn more by looking at the bones as well and not necessarily about whether you do or do not get milk residue.
00:01:16
Speaker
extremely what an exciting topic. Although I think I guess with this it's less traditional zookeology and more kind of the last couple decades of innovations and how we do zookeology. So you'll see it's very it's very archaeological science heavy which is great for me someone with a master's degree in archaeological science who cannot remember a single thing I learned in that year of my master's degree. But I guess we'll
00:01:46
Speaker
We'll rewind it a notch
Understanding Dairy Products
00:01:48
Speaker
or two. What do we mean by dairy, actually? Of course, when we mention dairy, milk is the main sort of obvious product that comes to mind. Of course, it includes a variety of other sort of milk-based products.
00:02:01
Speaker
First and foremost, I guess, will be cheese, which is made by coagulating milk, usually through the aid of an acidic substance. Citric acid is used in modern cheese making a lot, but citrus juice also helps, lemon in particular.
00:02:17
Speaker
and this will allow the milk to coagulate and the curds will create so these chunky bits if you will and by separating those from the whey aka the liquidy bits you get your cheese which will have your fresh cheese as it is or you can leave it to mature for a little bit and well that's how you get your hard cheese.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, basically. I mean, it's also, I think, the most important milk product. But it's not just about the cheese, as much as I'd love it to be. We also have, you know, butter, where it's basically just the remaining fat and protein resulting from churning milk or cream. And this also invites me to do my first tangent, which is, Simona, when you were in school, did you have to make butter? No, but I make it home myself. Okay.
00:03:04
Speaker
I did. I had to make butter. Yeah. Okay. So it's not just cause I had this conversation the other day because I was, I wanted to know if this was a UK thing as well. Cause in America, I think it's very common for kids to have to make butter in class.
00:03:19
Speaker
yeah we need to make what some people call drop scones but they're basically like these kind of like soda based very hard biscuits which is what Americans would call them and we would have to make these soda scones and then we'd have to churn the butter. There's a place in Northern Ireland called the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and it's like an open air museum and a lot of their main displays in the wee houses are where people make these like soda scones and there's always people churning butter so
00:03:47
Speaker
definitely something very close to my childhood. We've never done anything like that because I guess that would be, what would the subject be called? Like a home-ed? Well, for us it was a science experiment thing where they just gave us jars with cream in it and then we just had to shake it really, really hard for like 10 minutes and then it would be butter. That sounds painstaking.
00:04:13
Speaker
lot of children were left behind in the US educational system, myself included. So yeah, anyway, it's not just about butter either. Because there's also yogurt or what people in this country call yogurt, which is wild and weird, but whatever. It's
00:04:30
Speaker
We'll skip over that because I could go an hour on that. We're broadly defined as products made from fermenting milk, of course in a particular case of yogurt, is through thermophilic bacteria.
Cultural Perspectives on Dairy Foods
00:04:44
Speaker
It's yogurt. Thermophilic meaning it likes heat, in case people don't. I've never heard of thermophilic before, but I could work it out.
00:04:55
Speaker
I want that on the t-shirt. Absolutely thermophilic. That's not just yogurt, because there's a variety of other fermented milk-based products and drinks. Kefir comes to mind as well. Of course, you have cream. The fat layer skimmed off the top of the milk.
00:05:14
Speaker
don't know if you get a lot of the sort of organic whole milk, especially like, I guess, in Britain, sort of from, like, if you get them from a milkman, they will be like a thick, good inch of cream at the top, they kind of have to sort of pry out with a spoon for you can actually use the milk.
00:05:30
Speaker
And fun fact, I'm violently lactose intolerant, so I might die during this conversation. Something I kind of knew, basically a lot of, you know, East Asian populations are lactose intolerant. And I found this out the hard way when I decided to eat, I believe, all the cheese from a very fancy cheese and wine place.
00:05:53
Speaker
the day before I moved to the UK and was so violently ill, I was almost taken to the hospital. Cheese. Never again. Just kidding. I love cheese. It sounds like it was worth it, though. Oh, it was absolutely worth it. I was happy to miss going to the UK for some really good cheese. Must have been. I mean, could you imagine that as an excuse, like phoning up the airport? Yeah, too much cheese. I'm really sorry. The airline's like, yeah, I understand it. We'll just move your flight. It's understandable.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah, but it was pretty incredible. It's one of those things where you're kind of like, yeah, I don't feel great when I eat cheese and I never really liked milk. And then, oh boy, no, actually my body violently rejects cheese and all other dairy products.
00:06:37
Speaker
But whatever, it's fine.
Human Adaptation to Milk Consumption
00:06:40
Speaker
And to be fair, it's actually very important to talk about that because it ties into kind of how we understand dairying and milk consumption over time. So like basically everything we've ever talked about on this podcast when it comes to origin stories, you know, we're not really sure. Still, it's a big question. There's a lot of research that has to be done to kind of understand it.
00:07:05
Speaker
Just the act of consuming milk from another species is considered to be an adaptation that's really unique to our species of Homo sapiens. And it's actually seen as a major event in the evolution of human diets. And it makes sense to kind of adapt to consuming milk from other species because animal milk is quite rich in proteins and nutrients, and it's very useful when resources might be scarce.
00:07:33
Speaker
So the actual origins of, you know, dairying and milk consumption in general is kind of a mystery, although there's lots of research being done to investigate this. So, you know, like what we've seen with domestication, which we've discussed in, I don't know, like a dozen episodes at this point. It's a lot more than one.
00:07:54
Speaker
Definitely more than one. You know, it may have occurred at different times and different areas. It may have kind of come and gone with time. But more or less, it probably came around the Neolithic and the rise of agriculture and domestication, which, you know.
00:08:12
Speaker
Makes sense. And now if you've got your bingo cards at hand, we have, well, we have a double one, we have Neolithic, or likely occurred in different locations across different time periods. We could probably just make a bingo card based on the domestication episode framework, because we basically do the same episode over and over again. Yeah, it's just something, yeah, occurred
00:08:37
Speaker
across, I guess, different time periods and likely across different geographical areas, but broadly in the Neolithic and the Near East, among other regions.
Origins and Impact of Dairying
00:08:50
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, yeah, like Simone said, Early's origins may be in the Near East, Western Asia, following early domestication about 10,500 years ago, give or take.
00:09:02
Speaker
But in other places, we see different stories, but still not necessarily that far away from that time period. So in East Africa, for example, milk consumption may have occurred as early as when herding became a really common practice among pastoralists around 6000 B.C. And in Britain, I believe the earliest date for processing milk fats is around 4000 B.C.
00:09:26
Speaker
Of course, there's also some debate as to how much dairy was actually contributing to the average Neolithic diet as well. It could have been very low amounts. It could have been a lot. We're still not entirely sure.
00:09:39
Speaker
But this leads to the secondary products revolution, which I can't remember if we talked about. I feel like we probably did. Not entirely sure we did, you know? Because it's kind of a big thing in Zuark. At least it's like a big theory. So probably we're kind of talking about the theory itself. So in 1981, Andrew Sherritt proposed this model called the secondary products revolution, where you have your early domesticated species, which are basically your sheep, your goat, your cattle.
00:10:08
Speaker
were mainly domesticated for primary products. So their meats, their skins and hides, and their bones, but eventually become more intensively exploited for their secondary products. So physical labor, so being a beast burden, doing traction and plowing, their wool, and milk, obviously. So
00:10:28
Speaker
This happens later on, much later after domestication first happens, and it spreads across from Western Asia and Northern Africa. So secondary products had a massive impact on agriculture. It meant that animals didn't have to just be outright slaughtered for their products. We could use them to do labor, to intensify and spread agricultural work, and ultimately reduce the difficulty of farming for humans.
00:10:56
Speaker
And it's overall kind of accepted by most archaeologists, but there's still kind of bits of critique here and there as to its use as like a broad model, especially as there are still some evidence of secondary products that kind of pre-date where the secondary products for revolution may have occurred. So it may or may not be as cut and dry as this, although it does make sense for the most part.
00:11:22
Speaker
I guess sort of over time, moving from the secondary products revolution. I mean, I guess, again, it's one of those things that is widely dependent on the region, but you do tend to see sort of fluctuation between what were sort of the most common secondary products that were produced for livestock, leading all the way up to what
00:11:44
Speaker
into the Iron Age and the Roman period and into the early medieval period where farms tended to be fairly small and self-sufficient for the most part, at least in Britain, where the usual suspects of domesticates would be kept.
00:12:01
Speaker
But of course, over time, as we go sort of later into the medieval period and the post medieval period, growing organization meant more reliance on farms to support these new populations, especially with the establishment again, of sort of larger towns and cities in the medieval period, resulting then in more centralized and efficient productions of dairy and meat from cows in this specific example.
00:12:24
Speaker
This was also influenced by the increased use of horses on farms for ploughing and traction, leaving them freeing up cattle to be used elsewhere. Milk, the production thereof in particular, became more important for cattle after around the mid 7th century, which can be seen in the zoarchological record as well as based on mortality profile. We've discussed mortality profiles a few times
00:12:50
Speaker
Before definitely a bunch of episodes say you got your assemblage of animal bones and you look so out of the age of also the ageable mandibles to the ageable elements and so you draw up sort of what your.
00:13:04
Speaker
ages are sort of for that assemblage. And from that you can establish a more clarity profile. So say, in the case of dairy, you'll find a lot of the offspring or cattle being slaughtered quite early on. So then the milk could be kept and actually used as a secondary product.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah. So yeah, by the mid 11th century, the dairy industry had grown a lot. Although beef production had also eventually kind of increased in importance as well. So by the time you get to like the mid to late medieval period, you have a very mixed product focus. So you have both dairy and beef being produced at pretty high frequencies.
00:13:46
Speaker
And you can even see the
Evolution of the Dairy Industry
00:13:48
Speaker
importance of cattle overall reflected in historical texts around this time, especially when it comes to cattle theft, which was considered a very serious crime starting with the 9th century. Now, lots of things happen, but we're going to skip right to kind of the industrial age, because that's probably where some of the most important innovations in
00:14:08
Speaker
how we use dairy and how we produce kind of dairy products happened. So dairy amongst other livestock products became massively important as Western European exports to Britain as it became more industrialized.
00:14:24
Speaker
Britain was actually referred to as a bottomless pit that can never be filled by Dutch cattle authorities. Now, it also, it provided this in the Dutch, but I'm not going to embarrass myself as someone whose Dutch is extremely poor. So I'm just going to leave you with that, which is a wild thing to say and have in historical text. But yeah. Also, what does a Dutch cattle authority do? They just oversee cattle?
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there were like books that were cited and stuff in the paper I was reading about this. So there's a plethora of texts on this.
00:15:06
Speaker
If for a Dutch cattle enthusiast, go for it, you know? But I mean, it being referred to as a bottomless pit was actually quite accurate. So exports of cheese from just the Netherlands to Britain increased by 130% in the 1800s, with cattle and sheep exports being increased by over 3000% around that time.
00:15:29
Speaker
So big deal, dairy. And alongside all this, we start seeing kind of the mechanization of dairying. By the 1950s, you start seeing the introduction of new milking machines, although milk machines were around since about World War I. But now we're seeing them even more mechanized, especially with milk tanks, all these kind of technological advances happening to further centralize and further make
00:15:59
Speaker
production very efficient and from the 1950s onward Derry becomes part of the national character of America and advertised heavily to the masses which was highly problematic given what it was being implicitly associated with like purity and all those other extremely problematic things to talk about in the 1950s and something I think we've actually talked about when we talked about Antarctica
00:16:22
Speaker
Yes, so it's good to say, like it would be like not about a ripestat about sort of the American continent, no Antarctica. But it was a part of the American push towards dairy being a big thing. So obviously that was bad. But in the late 90s and early 2000s, it gave us the Got Milk campaign. So who can say if it was bad overall? Which I think in that episode I described to you both because it is an extremely American thing. I mean, if you ever wanted to see Mario with like a milk mustache,
00:16:49
Speaker
look up the Got Milk campaign if you're not from the United States. It's my entire childhood. I think I've seen a few of them, like in magazines I used to learn English from, so like these are like learn English magazines. I think they were printed specifically for like non-English speakers to learn what, like British or American English, depending on the ones you bought. Then I think I've seen some of those in there. That makes sense. It was a big like push in educational, like
00:17:19
Speaker
magazines and in schools, there were everywhere, like it was absolutely everywhere, which was extremely alienating for someone who not only didn't like milk, but was from a particularly lactose intolerant population. So that was fun. But it is kind of a cool campaign. So I think while we take a break, everyone else can go look up the campaign. It's fun. If you're if you're not from America, it's very interesting and interesting insight into the American psyche.
00:17:47
Speaker
And we are back with Archaeo Animals episode 61.
Zooarchaeological Methods in Dairying
00:17:51
Speaker
We are talking about the zoo archaeology of dairy. And now we're actually going to talk about the zoo archaeology of dairy because we kind of just spent the first part talking about like the whole history and what dairy was, all that kind of nonsense. But now we'll actually get to how do we find dairy, zoo archaeologically and archaeologically. Like we said in the beginning, it's not really going to be a bone heavy episode.
00:18:18
Speaker
although we can kind of use bones. So let's get to that part first. Basically, you know, if you find cattle remains,
00:18:27
Speaker
there's probably a good chance milk was being consumed on this site. I mean, it's probably the most common, most important source of evidence for dairying, although sometimes circumstantial. I mean, if you look at kind of domestic sites across Europe during the late Neolithic to the early Bronze Age, you do see the number of cattle bones increase overall as far as numbers. However, of course, the presence of cattle doesn't
00:18:56
Speaker
entirely mean dairying, because obviously cows are used for a variety of other products too. Which takes us back to our mortality profiles, which I have a very, very heavily hinted at in the last segment. They'll go, yes, if you draw a mortality profile through identifying the age at death of your assemblage, you might be able to get
00:19:17
Speaker
a better idea of what sort of primary and secondary products were being produced on that site. So a daring herd, as again, a very heavily hinted at in a previous segment, will have a very specific looking profile in as much you'll see the early culling of young individuals and the retention of the older ones.
00:19:37
Speaker
of course, you know, if all the milk that the cow is producing is going to the offspring, then well, there's no milk for you. Yeah. And this kind of mortality profile isn't just for cattle, it goes for basically any of the kind of
00:19:51
Speaker
animals that produce milk that humans utilize. I guess in a way you could look also to an extent as sexing if you can do sexing in your assemblage because it can be tricky with a small fragments you get sometimes because of course you'll see sort of a fairly substantial population of females with only sort of the odd male here and there. As opposed, you know, if you're using them for strat for traction, there's like a straight males were quite
00:20:16
Speaker
often implemented for traction, so you might see a higher population of stairs instead. Which, how do I tell the difference between a stair and a bull? It's male, but it's longer. It's a long boy, tend to be lankier. And believe me, archaeologists love when you write that on your site reports. Long boy. Long boy. LB, long boy. So what? A long boy? No, okay. Sheep and goat remain.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yes. Sheep slash goat remains. I was thinking of a joke and then got lost halfway through. So we'll move onto your sheep. Sheep slash goat remains because as we've again hinted at in a plethora of episodes, it is sometimes quite tricky to tell the difference between sheep and goat.
00:21:06
Speaker
as in like most of their appendicular skeleton, looks basically identical. So there's some very, very sort of few sort of visual cues, but most of it is down to biometry, which don't go there. No, sheep goat. Yes. Ovi capri, the zoo archaeologist friend.
Adaptation of Sheep and Goats to Dairying
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah, the Ovi capra from like obvious areas, just the scientific name for the sheep. And capra here, of course, just the one for goat. So yeah, Ovi capri.
00:21:36
Speaker
a good old friend. But sheep and goat and goats, much like cattle, also particularly important for people, especially in arid environments, as both species are actually well suited for post-climatic stress recovery.
00:21:52
Speaker
even though sheep have more of a penchant to just die compared to goats. Especially goats will even reproduce much faster following events such as drought. Goats just being overall hardier and just happier even in more steep terrain and more like sparse vegetation compared to sheep. As an example, East African pastoralists likely used both sheep and goat quite often for milk.
00:22:18
Speaker
environments and that would be kind of the best way forward and goats in particular are interesting to think about with dairying because goats may or may not have been one of the earlier species to be domesticated again very much up in the air whether or not that's true but it could possibly mean that if there was a lot of early milking going on they may have been kind of
00:22:40
Speaker
one of the earlier ones. Who knows? And I guess you'd also be a way to ease yourself into it because isn't goat milk, either? Does it have less lactose? Or is it just generally just more digestible for people that are generally very unhappy with dairy? Yeah, I think it might be, which also kind of leads towards maybe that beginning. I mean, to be fair, we already can't tell like when the earliest
00:23:07
Speaker
milking was happening, let alone species. But I think you could probably put some money on goats maybe being one of the earlier ones over at the saddle. Although cattle obviously, yeah. Maybe you try to let cows milk be like, oh, no, no, that's like, no, that's, that's too much. I'm going to work my way up. We'll start with goats.
00:23:27
Speaker
just ease myself into this whole dairy thing. Someone's telling me it's good for me. This is beginner milk. We're starting the beginner milk with goats and we'll move to more advanced milk, which is cattle. Yes, another thing, so a trace left on the bones that may indicate milking, and that is something that is new to me actually, is looking at metapodial thickness of sheep and goat. So like the cortical layer of the bones or the outer layer of the metapodials,
00:23:55
Speaker
peer to thin due to large scale milking activities. And it also occurs with increased frequencies of older female individuals in assemblages. Yeah, I'm not I'm actually not 100% sure on the metapolial thickness. I think it's been used before, but not potentially something that's like a major signifier. I think it's kind of correlated with other evidence to suggest milking with goats and sheep.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah, because also I would guess like, us like fitting of bones isn't something that would generally happen.
00:24:29
Speaker
to older individuals anyway. I think that might actually be the bigger signifier, but that was kind of what some research was doing, looking at. So I guess it was one characteristic out of a few to kind of identify populations that may have been used for milking. Well, as for everything, if you've got your bingo cards, it's another piece of the puzzle.
00:24:52
Speaker
So by itself, it doesn't necessarily prove your theory, but when you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, you recreated this wonderful picture that is archaeology. This was archaeo-animals. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the theme of this episode is, you know, you can use all of these things individually as evidence, but it's not really strong evidence for daring, but if you put some of them together, you get a pretty good taste.
00:25:16
Speaker
And of course, what makes it more complicated is that it's not just about cattle or sheep or goats, depending on where you are could be other animals such as yak, donkeys, buffalo. Again, I think we've talked about some of these animals before in previous episodes, but just to be real quick, it's very culturally and environmentally dependent. Many mammals produce milk and humans are incredibly resourceful species for better or worse.
00:25:45
Speaker
So for example, yak were particularly important as their milk is really high in fat and it's obviously really useful then for the kind of freezing environments that they and their human companions live in. And interestingly, it could also be used to make candles and lamps.
00:26:03
Speaker
And again, I wonder whether yak milk is also more digestible than cow's milk in a way, just because like then, purely non scientific thought here, but I've seen especially in recent years, there's been sort of a spike in sale of yak chews for dogs. Obviously lactose intolerant because you know, you tolerate lactose as long as you're sort of feeding from your mother and then they are weaned and then they don't have dairy anymore.
00:26:32
Speaker
as it happens to every other species but us. Yeah. We've just powered through the struggle, we'll be like, no, I don't care if it makes me ill, I'm going to have it anyway. Yeah, and we will actually talk about that more scientifically in a second. Is it really bad that I give Bruno a yak chew? Is that bad? He seems to really like them. Oh, well enough also. Yeah, but like if he's blacked with tolerance. Yeah, but I guess it's better than gestable.
00:26:59
Speaker
Yeah, you used to really like yogurt. Natural yogurt tends to be okay. Oh, okay. Thank you. But again, I think the fermentation process, I think, does decrease the lactose in the product. Ah, okay. And also, the more cheese is matured, the less lactose it'll have. So I think parmesan, especially if you get sort of the turbo, like, you know, 30 month aged, it'll have considerably less lactose than, say, ricotta.
00:27:27
Speaker
Oh, OK. Right. Gotcha. Gotcha. No worries. So Bruno can, my dog, Bruno, can have like old cheese, but can't have new cheese. Gotcha. Thank you for putting my mind at rest. In moderation. In moderation? What's moderation when it comes to cheese? In moderation. Like, disclaimer, I am not a dog nutritionist. Very important disclaimer.
00:27:55
Speaker
Well, I am a zoologyologist and I can say that when we do talk about dairying, we're not just talking about individual species. People will use multiple species probably at the same time. So for example, British Neolithic dental calculus, which we'll talk about in a second, suggests that sheep and goats and cows were all used at the same time for milk. And obviously that's the same case kind of
00:28:20
Speaker
in the modern day. There are various types of milk, including non-dairy ones, thank goodness. Do you think they tried to mix it all at the same time, like a turbo glass of milk? Oh, Simona, Simona, we will talk about that later on in this episode. Don't worry. Also, because like British Neolithic, what is a glass? I don't know.
00:28:44
Speaker
anyway. But yes, as Alex has hinted at, we can get an idea of dairy consumption, also by looking at human remains and specifically at the evidence of the traces of dairy consumption leaves on the human body.
00:29:00
Speaker
The adaptation to dairy may have even driven an intensive selection for the gene adaptation of lactase persistence, LP, which allows for lactose ingestion by adults.
Lactase Persistence in Humans
00:29:11
Speaker
Alex was sadly not chosen for this adaptation. I'm not LP.
00:29:16
Speaker
Sadly, I'm not. To be fair, it's also something that's kind of relatively new as far as the research. And it's still being debated as there's now evidence for low LP being found in the olefic populations that also have other evidence of dairying. So it could be that milk consumption back then was very low. It may have been processed in a way to remove lactose, like fermentation or it created into different cheeses.
00:29:43
Speaker
Or dairy may have been used in a non-consumptive way, which we will also discuss later on. Or all of those things. Who knows?
00:29:52
Speaker
So research looking into the African origins of dairy use dairy proteins found in the dental calculus of human teeth for the uninitiated calculus is mineralized plaque, and they've used that data to identify regions that are adapted early to consuming dairy. The proteins can even be narrowed down to just the family. So for cows would be bovine, obvious for sheep at Capra, or
00:30:20
Speaker
um, goat. I keep forgetting the word for goat. It's it's a day. However, there's still some issues with species identification via calculus. For example, yak, our good old friend the yak is particularly difficult to identify due to only deferring from other boban species by one single triptych peptide. So yeah, god, I don't, glad I don't do.
00:30:46
Speaker
that anymore. That seems annoying. I guess we have we looked at mortality profiles, we've looked at the dead animals, we've looked at the human remains. But there's also another way where you could sort of find evidence of dairy consumption or production, which is dairy related artifacts, which is like most commonly will be in the form of a container used for holding dairy products.
Dairy Artifacts and Cultural Practices
00:31:12
Speaker
So normally these are made out of ceramic,
00:31:15
Speaker
there are sort of certain ceramic typologies which were created for use in dairying most likely. So for example, in prehistoric Finland corded ware pottery likely aligns with substance practices and dairy consumption becoming normalized. You also get, you get old cheese pots.
00:31:34
Speaker
what they're known as. It's perforated ceramic vessels used to strain cheese. So we have like the oldest example is from about 7000 years ago in Poland. But you also find those throughout. Make sure you've got your bingo cards ready. Roman Britain. Lots of cheap cheese pots, which I love to personally call colanders, because they also look like a colander. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. But then which came first, the cheese strainer of the colander, probably the cheese strainer.
00:32:03
Speaker
Along with that, you get your regular bowls, which are associated with these strainers to hold the whey that get separated. However, these strainers or coloners can be tricky to identify as may have also been used as sieves for other products like honey being separated from beeswax. We also actually find artistic representations of dairying and milking as well.
00:32:30
Speaker
So in ancient Mesopotamia we see various wall art that shows milking and even dairy herds depicted on cylinder seals including depictions of little milk vessels as well which is really cool.
00:32:45
Speaker
I'm going to go on a very slight tangent because you mentioned bowls that were associated with the strainers which will be used to sort of capture the whey. You would do that because the whey is good to keep because you can use it again and again and again because once you have your whey from cheese making you can actually reuse that as the acidic substance to make more cheese. Oh I didn't know that but I'm not as crafty and handy as you are.
00:33:09
Speaker
Oh, and also, again, on a slight cheese tangent, like everyone's probably familiar with the cheese ricotta, just actually named that way, because it literally means cooked twice, because then you have your cheese making, you get your curds, you make your cheese out of it. Now, if you get the way, and you heat it again,
00:33:29
Speaker
some more curds will form, that's your ricotta. It's literally cooked again. Now, probably the most important piece of dairy evidence, particularly in the last decade, a couple of decades, I guess, is lipid analysis. And probably that's how most research today is
00:33:50
Speaker
basing their analysis of kind of daring in the past. So residue from ceramics can be analyzed for lipids, which are molecules that are insoluble in water and includes fats, oils, and waxes. And then these can actually be further analyzed to distinguish fat origins, including dairy fats.
00:34:11
Speaker
Now, of course, this becomes a bit complicated depending on cultural norms. So, for example, early African pastoralists actually use gourds rather than ceramics to store milk, so you wouldn't really be able to use a little bit of analysis on that. And it's just extremely common way to kind of
00:34:28
Speaker
Identify ceramics that were used for milk and for cheese making, because like we said, you know, from just looking at it with your eye, it may be difficult to differentiate ceramics based on what they were used for, but with lipid analysis, we can get a better idea of what was actually inside those ceramics.
00:34:48
Speaker
But at the end of the day, and as Simona said, ultimately, the best case scenario for looking at dairy in the past is a kind of a combination of all these different evidences to produce a strong case for having dairy in the site you're looking at. And while we put together this puzzle, we will take a break. And we are back with archaeo-animals episode 61.
The Mystery of Bog Butter
00:35:13
Speaker
We are talking about this archaeology of dairy and it's time for
00:35:17
Speaker
Well, it's time for case studies, but it's more importantly time for a bog, butter. K-Sully better be real exciting. You hyped it up too much.
00:35:31
Speaker
I mean, it's bog butter. Everyone knows bog butter. Even my non-archaeologist friends know about bog butter, because one, it's so interesting, and two, it's really funny. I mean, we were specifically talking about Irish bog butter, but it is weirdly, and I had no idea about this, it is weirdly a really common occurrence in bogs found across Ireland and Scotland.
00:35:56
Speaker
to slightly kind of move back a bit because I actually don't know if we've really talked about bogs on this show. I think we may have glanced on the subject of bogs.
00:36:10
Speaker
Because it's not really a zoo arc thing, is it? It's more of a... No, you tend to associate it with human remains and sort of bog bodies and such. Yeah. So bogs are, especially for people who may be in areas where bogs aren't really a thing, they are ultimately extremely handy environments for archaeologists.
00:36:30
Speaker
due to their very unique physical and chemical composition, which aids in preservation. And that's how you get bog bodies, which are probably the most well-known, besides the butter, kind of product of bogs. It just preserves organic materials so well that, you know, we have some incredible human remains from, you know,
00:36:56
Speaker
later prehistoric that are still quite well preserved because of the bogs. My first question is, how much do you think bok butter stinks?
00:37:08
Speaker
I mean, yeah, probably bad. Because waterlog deposits sting. Yes. As someone who has dealt with what I've talked on this podcast before, because someone made some fantastic fan art of it. Cheesy bone, which is just... Forgot my cheesy bone.
00:37:26
Speaker
I know we must we are returning the cheesy bone, which makes sense because we are talking about dairy, which has nothing to do with dairy. It's just waterlogged bone that we just always refer to as cheesy bone on site because it just it just crumbles when you touch it. It's so waterlogged. It's horrific. Oh, so many things are like the anaerobic conditions were sort of like making some very, very stable necessarily. But oh, yeah, no, this was the side I worked on was weird. It was caves.
00:37:57
Speaker
Caves and water aren't as good of a... Unfortunately, I did not work in a bog, which would have been cool. Instead, I had to face my fear of claustrophobia in a cave. I think what I find, in my experience with water-locked bones, that it goes black. Well, yeah. But not child black. Just, yeah.
00:38:19
Speaker
uncharthed, but still black. I mean, in general, the bone smells like if anyone's ever had to drill into bone. And to be honest, if you've gone to the dentist and had to get work done, you know what bone smells like. And it's disgusting. And so are waterlogged deposits. See a good heli-tip. How do I tell if this is waterlogged? Does it stink? Probably. Is it what?
00:38:41
Speaker
I mean, yes, they could also be water lane, which doesn't necessarily make your water logged. But semantics, bog butter. Bog butter. So yeah, weirdly common occurrence. I in my tiny little brain, I was like, bog butter has been found like once or twice, right? No, there has been at least 500 bog butters found in Ireland alone. That is 500 bog butters you could eat, folks. You could have a delicious meal.
00:39:09
Speaker
Right, please, please, as a disclaimer here, please don't eat the bug butter. We do not know what the effects are, OK? We cannot guarantee it's safe, OK? Now, as somebody who's the representative of the country of bug butter, obviously, very, very important. But yeah, it has to be treated with respect. You must respect the butter.
00:39:33
Speaker
You want to eat the butter, what are you talking about? I do want to eat the butter really badly. But now you're talking about the cheesy bones and I'm like, right, why do we have cheesy bones, bog butter? And like, what's the bread? You know what I mean? You're making a sandwich in my mind. Well, that's stuff.
00:39:50
Speaker
That's the thing when I was saying that I feel like bog butter has become kind of like a meme outside of archaeology because I've seen people talk about wanting to take like the bread that's been preserved in like Pompeii and slather it with the bog butter.
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah, baby, you got a meal going there. Isn't that just the thing with people in general that they just want to eat everything? Because I've heard that with that sort of preserved mammoth meat in the tundra. And people wanted to eat that. Pretty sure over an article, I think that someone wanted to like, drink, I think it's like some sarcophagi that someone wanted to have the sort of the liquid that was oozing out, like, you know, like, just name something that someone out there that wants to eat it.
00:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, and that's why the human species is a fascinating species. And it's a miracle every day that we have not made ourselves extinct. Anyway, bog butter. So the earliest bog butter is from the early Bronze Age. So that's like your oldest vintage butter that you could eat if, say, you'd like to eat the bog butter.
00:40:57
Speaker
And it's actually found in a variety of contexts. So you have different types of bog butter to select in your meal. Sometimes it's found in baskets or other kind of wooden containers. Sometimes it's wrapped in bark or even animal tissue. Or sometimes it's just what I refer to as nude. Someone just plopped the butter down into the bog.
00:41:23
Speaker
We'll delve more into it further, but I'm just picturing to someone at some point in 3000 BC, just keep losing their butters into the bog. I'm like, oh no! I can't hold all these butters. I'm just like, smiling over. Oh please, can someone make fan art?
00:41:43
Speaker
It's like suddenly, it's like, oh, another one. I mean, OK. I mean, but honestly, from an archaeological point of view, like, either people keep accidentally dropping the butter because they keep squeezing it outside of their hat or they're putting it down on purpose. But I really like the idea that they're like squeezing the butter and it just like comes out like a bar of soap.
00:42:08
Speaker
or there was a butter delivery service, right? And the delivery boy would just get paid upfront. So it's like, I call it, you know, like, sort of like the ones that now sort of deliver newspapers. I can't be bothered to deliver all of these. I'm just bobbing in the box. What would be called, like, bonger boo? Oh, I'm sorry, I've lost your butter on transit. I was going past this box.
00:42:36
Speaker
I slipped on the bug butter that was already there. Okay, we're done. Well, this is a fascinating theory, a fascinating theory for why bug butter exists. This is archaeology in practice, guys.
00:42:53
Speaker
I mean, that's the thing, though, is that we actually don't really know why bog butter exists. So, you know what? It's fair game. I mean, for normal people, their normal theories for bog butter includes the fact that it was used as storage for enhancing the flavor. Or, and this is what I like to think about, ritual reasons.
00:43:20
Speaker
I like to imagine that we worshiped squirrels in the past and we saw them burning nuts in the ground. We were like, the squirrels have something here. I think they're on something. So yeah.
00:43:35
Speaker
bogs, as funny as they are, they actually are kind of really useful for storage, even though it is funny to think about people just losing their butters in the bog. So with storage, bogs are basically just natural fridges based on the way they're chemically composed.
00:43:54
Speaker
the environment that the chemical composition of bugs creates is very cool and anaerobic and high acidity so you could basically put some butter there and it would be okay and also butter was actually quite valuable so you would you would want to keep them safe in a in a bug so that the bog boy doesn't steal your butter
00:44:21
Speaker
It's the goblin of the bog, the boglin. I want to reiterate that the theories I'm talking about come from academic texts. I didn't make these up. Boglin. Oh God.
00:44:40
Speaker
So, so they're actually, speaking of texts, there are actually historical texts that suggest that bog butter was traditionally known for being better tasting than fresh butter. I meant to write butter, but I wrote bog. So bog was really on the mind. It's starting to look like not a word, but yeah. I guess it must have boggled the mind. Oh, we're getting bogged down. Come on. No.
00:45:09
Speaker
oh god save us alex i can't believe i have to save this podcast that's how you know how bad it's gotten but yeah there's like actual folklore and text saying that putting butter in a bog makes it taste much better than fresh butter but anyway ritual as much as we like to say everyone says ritual for everything it actually kind of makes sense because bogs are
00:45:35
Speaker
Traditionally, or at least apparently, ritual
Theories Behind Bog Butter
00:45:38
Speaker
hotspots. Like we said, Bog Buddy exists, which may or may not have been kind of ritual depositions. It's kind of dependent on what you're talking about, as there's lots of places with bogs. And there's also weapon deposition that's found in bogs very commonly.
00:45:56
Speaker
So, you know, bug letters may have been used virtually to ask for protection of livestock and for dairy production. And if Tristan's right, may have also been a kind of appeasement to the squirrel gods. Who knows?
00:46:12
Speaker
So, of course, I looked up what bog butter tastes like, because I was like, someone's had to have eaten one, right? Like, I would have done it. If I was the archaeologist who found the bog butter, I would have absolutely eaten it, and then I would have died, and it would have been worth it. It's fine. So there have been some cases of people allegedly trying bog butter, although I think it's more likely people who have attempted to make their own bog butter,
00:46:37
Speaker
So not as old. So some words, some choice words I've seen have been funky, putrid, pungent, and my favorite is parmesan-like. Disclaimer, please do not eat the archaeology. So kind of going back to another thing that Simone mentioned before, what animals were these butters made of? So DNA identification of species has been unsurprisingly very difficult and only kind of recently been accomplished.
00:47:07
Speaker
with sheep and goat and cattle being identified among various samples. But there's also some samples where sheep and goat milk were potentially blended together to make butter. So on one hand, if we're thinking about it on a ritual perspective, that kind of makes sense. You want protection for all your animals, you'll put all of their
00:47:24
Speaker
milk products into one thing, but it could have also been attempts by smaller farms to, you know, utilize all the resources they had into making butter, which was so valuable. And there we have finished the bog butter. Is everyone okay now? Have we all settled down? I think so. It's okay. I won't continue this. I think we've milked it enough. I will turn this podcast around if we won't all behave.
00:47:51
Speaker
When did I become the voice of reason? You're not my real mom. Forgive me for making this podcast more cheesy than it already is. Boo! Boo the man. I hope everyone who's listening to this podcast is out loud booing the man for ruining my podcast. Cheese. We're going to cheese.
00:48:17
Speaker
Yes, we will move swiftly and literally swiftly because most of our time has been taken up by the squirrel guards and the bog boy delivering butter. Right, our second case study is about cheese making in Neolithic Europe.
Neolithic Cheese Strainers and Dairy Evidence
00:48:33
Speaker
Now, cheese is not only very important to late night snackers such as Alex and myself, but also was also an important innovation to preserve and transport milk, as well as make it more digestible. That is if the
00:48:49
Speaker
the delivery boy doesn't drop it all into a bog. Perforated pottery identified as linear pottery from Central Europe has been potentially identified as cheese strainers. Again, the cheese pots that we discussed in the earlier segment of this episode, where you have these ceramic vessels, which
00:49:09
Speaker
holes in the bottom, it's a colander. This is correlated with the fact that the linear pottery culture occurs during early domestication, a nearby archaeological context with milk-bearing animal remains.
00:49:21
Speaker
This theory has, however, been pushed back somewhat due to the lack of evidence for specifically milk on the pottery sort of through sort of lipid analysis and some of the other purposes, which again, we discussed in a previous segment, as both rated pottery and simps can also be used for a variety of non-milk products as well. Alex mentioned honey and beeswax, but also beer. They could also be used as flame covers. So, you know, no lipid analysis, no party in a way.
00:49:50
Speaker
Researchers were however able to identify dairy fat residues on linear pottery, providing evidence that some pottery was used to process milk between 5200 and 4800 BCE. Because of the presence of this perforated pottery, it was determined that this was likely used for cheese making rather than any other form of dairy processing.
00:50:12
Speaker
What was interesting about it is that the residue analysis was also able to differentiate certain pieces of pottery from others with regards to potential uses for cooking and straining. So, for example, you know, some pots had evidence of it being heated to higher temperatures, hence use for cooking, while some flasks add evidence of beeswax, which would have likely been flaked for honey storage. Though, incidentally, the beeswax may have also been used to waterproof some of the sieves, so the plot thickens somewhat.
00:50:42
Speaker
On the overall, the swiftest case study in the history of arterial animals is a very good illustration of having multiple sources that you can use as evidence for daring on a particular sort of site or time period. Also cheese is great even if it may or may not kill Alex. Cheese is amazing and I wish I could spend more time on cheese but unfortunately the bog boy has taken most of our time. What about bog cheese? I mean I was thinking about that.
00:51:12
Speaker
I mean, it kind of exists. The butter apparently tastes like that. I should also point out the report that I read and it was like a news article about the person who said it tasted like Parmesan. The person was like, it tastes like Parmesan. And then the person that was interviewing him was like, oh, so like, you know, like in a good way. And the guy was like, well, you know, the enzyme that makes that Parmesan taste is also like the one that's found in vomit. So.
00:51:40
Speaker
Oh, I think that that really sums up the dichotomy of bog butter. So that's cool. Anyway, the most important thing I want to impress upon the listeners is that bog butter is a weirdly common occurrence. So if you have a bog nearby, why don't you go take a big net and, you know, fish around. There's probably like a decent chance you might find some butter.
00:52:05
Speaker
And I can't say what to do with it afterwards, but you know, saying it's in your hands then. I'm not liable for what happens afterwards.
00:52:14
Speaker
but let us know what it may or may not taste like. And you can do that because we are on Twitter at ArcheoAnimals. We are also obviously on the Archeology Podcast Network website. And wherever you get your podcasts, where you can like, subscribe, follow us, you can leave us a nice review saying that you would love for us to never speak about bog butter again. Or an all bog butter episode.
00:52:42
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if you want to make a completely unlistable episode, but... No, we have to make the bog cast, like a whole podcast of my bogs. Oh, God, I can hear it now. Today's episode, I'm bog cast. Anyway, this has been Alex with Patrick, the only adult in the room. Oh, gosh.
00:53:19
Speaker
Thank you for listening to RQ animals. Please subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you get your podcast from. You can find us on Twitter at RQ animals. Also, the views expressed on the podcast are those of ourselves, the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of our institutions, employers and the RQ podcast network. Thanks for listening.
00:53:34
Speaker
Don't even bother to tune in next time.
00:53:44
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Laura Johnson. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.